Brian Brown, the president of the
National Organization for Marriage (NOM), on Friday denounced the Boy
Scouts of America's (BSA) recent decision to drop its ban on openly
gay youth.
At its annual gathering on Thursday
outside Dallas, Texas, 61 percent of the roughly 1,400 volunteer
leaders from scouting's 270 councils approved a proposal put forth by
the BSA to end its ban on openly gay scouts. The resolution, which
takes effect January 1, keeps in place a ban on gay adults.
The move comes more than a decade after
the organization won its Supreme Court case allowing it to exclude
gay scouts and leaders.
Brown, who heads the nation's most
vociferous group opposed to gay marriage, predicted in a statement
that the decision would lead to the organization's “sexualization”
and eventual “collapse.”
“Today is a sad day for the Boy
Scouts of America,” Brown
said. “They have succumbed to political pressure and abandoned
their historic roots in what will prove to be a failed attempt to
appease gay activists and corporate donors. Unfortunately, what they
have done is said to the world that their oath no longer means much.
Their decision to admit openly gay scouts will end up sexualizing the
organization.”
“I am certain that having changed
their policy on homosexuality, it's only a matter of time before
courts order them to admit homosexual scout leaders. Meanwhile,
countless thousands of churches will very likely pull their
sponsorship rather than endorse homosexuality, and the entire
organization will begin to collapse. All of this is happening not
because of a true grassroots demand of gay youth to be part of the
organization but by an orchestrated political effort by gay activists
who want to punish any group or organization that does not embrace
homosexuality. It's the beginning of the end for what once was one
of America's noblest organizations.”
ThinkProgress.com's
Zack Ford responded that NOM's involvement in the issue “reflects
how the group works against LGBT people, not for marriage.”
(Related: Gay
rights foes declare Boy Scouts dead.)